Abri Peyrony

Abri Peyrony (also known as Haut de Combe-Capelle) is a small MTA site at the base of a low cliff face in the Couze valley of southwest France. The site has been excavated twice before: once by D. Peyrony in the 1920s and again by Dibble and Lenoir in 1990. In 2009 we re-opened the site to see if in situ deposits remained. The subsequent excavations are part of a program to expand our data set on late Neandertal adaptations in western Europe.

2012 was the last planned excavation season. We are currently analyzing the material and preparing publications. This web site gives a summary of the work including what we are currently working on. In August, 2013, we published three bones tools that were found at Abri Peyrony.

Acknowledgements

The Abri Peyrony excavations are a combined MPI and OSA project. Direct financial support for the excavations comes from the Department of Human Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology led by Prof. Jean-Jacques Hublin, the Service Regional de Archaeologie formerly directed by Dr. Dany Baraud, and by the DRAC.

Additional support comes from OSA. In addition to the OSA team members, Harold Dibble, Dennis Sandgathe and Paul Goldberg helped make this project possible. We also thank the owners of the sites and the many local individuals that helped us. A special thanks goes as well to all of the student volunteers who helped make the work possible.